A group of us from Drukpa Penang carried out the Live to Love activity by visiting Yee Ran Jing Handicapped Children Home in Bukit Mertajam. The home was established in 2003 and at present it has 62 physically and mentally retarded individual ranging from the age of 5 to 47 years old. The home is made up of a double-storey terrace house whereby male and female are housed separately. The operation of the home is privately funded by a group of individuals and public donations. The children are mainly from very poor and broken family who cannot afford to take care of the children’s needs. There are 8 voluntary workers who help in taking care of these children and the cleanliness of the premises. At present there is no government subsidies but the Ex-Health Ministers had earlier helped on their behalf to apply for government aid but as of to date no approval has been granted.
Prior to the visit, we were informed of their needs, so we bought them some food supplies like vegetables, meat and some daily needs, hopefully it will provide them with better nutrition and hygiene. We felt immense sympathy towards these physically and mentally retarded children, they are really in need of love and care of our society. We do hope that our activity this time will let them feel that the society still show concern, love and care towards them.
We arrived during their lunch time when we noticed that some of these children, if not too restrained by their handicap, could actually eat on their own, but there are a few which needed assistance. Six of us volunteered to help in feeding them. The children, no doubt were not able to express their feeling, but they could sense our kind intentions and the process of feeding them went very smoothly as all of them were well behaved.
Some of these children looked sad and kept crying, some are cheerful, some are bad tempered and may scream out of a sudden as if they needed attention, some were hyper-active where at times when they got out of control, they would be tied up in order to control them. Although they are retarded, they have feelings and temper just like us, only that they expressed them in a different manner. When we were leaving, some of them were happy and even shook hands with us to say goodbye, as if they know that we would be coming back to see them again.
The Buddhist sutra stated, “Suffering is everywhere”. From this activity, we realized that merely reading about cases of suffering and seeing them in real life has such a different impact. Looking at so many of such children who go through so much suffering, we may feel helpless, but how could we bear to ignore them? We should indeed show as much concern and love as we could in an effort to lessen their sufferings.
This LTL activity, apart from being meaningful, provides us another lesson in life. Again, thank you Holiness for the blessing and leading us to the path of realization.
Great Job Drukpa Penang!! Thanks for sharing this heart felt experience